Why did I become a trugmaker?

On leaving school, I spent 11 years as an Antique Clock Repairer but in 1991 decided to give it up to study Habitat Management and Conservation. With a growing passion for conservation, on my move to East Sussex, I decided to do something practical rather than pushing paper around in a desk job. I became interested in woodland crafts, having had experience of hedgelaying and coppicing at College. Trugmaking fitting the bill because coppiced sweet chestnut readily sourced from High Weald woodlands is used for the handles and rims.

The High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is a nationally important landscape protected for its unique character of rolling hills draped with small irregular fields, scattered farmsteads, sunken lanes and abundant woods and hedges. A closer look at the area's woodland reveals a distinctive pattern of small woods, gills (wooded ravines) and shaws (copses). The High Weald AONB covers parts of Sussex, Kent and Surrey in the South East of England. Link to map

The High Weald boasts the greatest proportion of ancient woodland in the country, managed for centuries by skilled coppice workers. Coppice is woodland where the trees are cut periodically, and are left to regrow from the cut stumps, known as stools often producing multiple stems. Coppice woodland is an important habitat because many British flowering plants, mammals and insects thrive under the coppice management system and many rarer species are now only found in working coppice.

Coppiced woodland traditionally provided two main crops – poles cut from the underwood and timber obtained from the standard trees. The poles cut from coppice wood are used for many different purposes ranging from firewood to fence panels, depending on the species and the age at which the poles are cut and five year old Sweet Chestnut poles are ideal for trugs.

The landscape and wildlife value of the area's woodlands are dependent on traditional management: by buying local products - such as Sussex trugs - that are made from materials resulting from traditional woodland management, you are helping to support this management and also helping to conserve the AONB and its local economy. In the past coppice has been an important renewable source of wood but as timber extraction has become more industrialized and competition from sources abroad has grown, coppice woodland has become less economic to manage and has been left to become derelict or has been replaced by conifer woodland. Many species that depend upon this valuable habitat have suffered as a result.